Aloha and welcome to "The Rumpus Room" well the progrees pics at least.. . a lil back story first... some of you may or may not know the polly recently my fiance inherited her grandmothers home after her unfortunate death last year.. gramdma lived in the home for around sixty years and the house is around the 62.We had to do alot of work to the house before we moved in becouse it was in disrepair.After about 2 months of work we decided to move in, and I immediately started thinking about fixin up the lil room behind the garage that grandma used as a laundry room and the whole family always called the rumpus room, into my very own tiki bar...It realy started by me just throwing all my tiki crap in the room but it never realy had the right feel ... it needed a propper balls out tiki make over...So after talking my new buddys "TikiG" and "TikiMango" at the Tonga Hut, they sayed they would love to help me tiki it up. Accualy alot of the ideas and work on the rumpus room has been a collaborative effort by all three of us and I would not have been able to do it without them so thanks.I dont even have any pics of the progress becouse they took them all so thanks for that too...anyways here we go...

Wow Kirby... you shouldn't type after drinking three Red Mai Tais (a Rumpus Room specialty). I'll try not to lead everyone on for too long, so here are a few pictures of the early days. We started work right after Thanksgiving, November 30th.

While it is very true that Kirby spoke with me and TikiG at The Tonga Hut, we wouldn't help him until he cut us a check that we could cash at BevMo! to replenish our home bar. Thanks again Kirby.

After the check cleared, we headed over to move out all the tiki mementos to make space in the Rumpus Room for some serious work.

We ripped out the 70s orange and brown shag rug so we had a clean slate. Though I think I will miss the mint green walls.

We decided to work "top-down", figuring that was probably the safest thing to do, especially when dealing with black paint.

The white acoustic ceiling tiles took two coats of ultra black paint. Kirby decided on a satin finish.

Once that dried, it was time to measure and hang the lauhala matting.

Hanging lauhala matting was not as easy for us as it apparently is for Bamboo Ben. One wall was plaster, requiring us to pre-drill holes for anchors and screws, as the staples, nails and duct tape we tried to use just wasn't working. After one horizontal run, we had to take a break.

On the normal drywall surfaces, we dabbled with spray-on contact adhesive (didn't have rubber contact cement). In the end we ended up just using a "heap big pile" of staples to deal with the matting.

I'll need to resize and crop a few more photos before I can post more on the progress of the bamboo after the matting was hung.

Just wanted to say Thank You to Kirby for the invitation to help build-up the rumpus room in the first place...I mean, what better way to spend a handful of lazy Sundays than to be around two extremely artistic and creative friends and build a tiki temple?

Can't beat Kirby's space to work with, so I'm pretty stoked on how nice the project has come along so far. I didn't make it to the last build session but I've heard thru the grapevine that the line of battle has crossed from inside to outside...more details to follow from Kirby and/or TikiMango I'm sure.

Thanks Kirby (for the op) and TikiMango - for the great times we shared so far.

Cheers!- the great times to come.

Hope to meet TC'rs at Kirby's Rumpus Room some evening soon to share a few Mai Tais and listen to jungle bongo and 60s surf LPs.

So a little more technical details. The ceiling in the Rumpus Room is 8ft high, with 4 steps going down into it. This gives it a nice womb-like potential. The back door to the Rumpus Room leads out onto the backyard lanai. I can't stress enough that with the plaster wall, it was very difficult to attach anything without a lot of extra work.

For the majority of bamboo, Kirby took apart a bamboo fence that was wired together. We had to try to sort the bamboo from the fence as the quality was variable. He also bought a dozen bamboo planks with nice finished edges, a few half-rounds and other bits at Oceanic Arts.

After we had our prime pieces selected, it was time to do some "aging" with a blow torch on the bamboo knuckles. This process can go very quickly with a good torch, and very slowly with a bad one. You have been warned.

I think here Kirby is toasting a muffin or something. After everything was aged, we cut a pile of 48" bamboo pieces to run along the bottom of the walls, since the lauhala matting was the upper half. The plan was to use a hefty (4"?) half-round as the divider between the lauhala matting and bamboo.

Again, the plastered wall was a pain! We didn't want to drill holes into the wall to attach each separate piece of bamboo, so we made a "frame" top and bottom, and slid the bamboo parts into place. We then stapled the bamboo pieces to the frame. Here you can see that this still took a long time to do, Kirby kept falling asleep.

Here's the finished results! the flash sort of washes everything out.

For a slight change in texture and to add some visual stimulus, we covered 4 closet doors with a reed matting (unsure of actual name), then framed these in with bamboo that we ripped to 5/8" wide. The end result is really great.

Making great progress, we deserved to move a few pieces of art back into the room and take a well deserved break.

After we got all the matting and bamboo up, it was time to start thinking about other aspects of the bar. Kirby wanted a mirrored shelf behind the bar to serve as both storage and display of bottles of rum and mugs.

Kirby laying out a design for his bar shelf.

TikiG cutting some pieces for the bar.

Saw dust flying as Kirby cuts bigger parts for the bar shelf.

This is what Kirby sketched, moai heads to act as the sides for the bar shelf.

With a little effort we managed to get the bar shelf constructed. This is the rough version, it has been sanded and painted.

With the bar shelf done, Kirby thinks hard what else can be done. We had one wall that was concrete block. It didn't have matting or bamboo, and needed something.

What in the world could Kirby be painting?

In the home stretch now, just little touch-up painting here and there. This was the door to the bathroom, painted black with brown faux wood grain.

There is enough completed to start moving in some of the larger places. Welcome home.

So I would think The Rumpus Room is about 95% complete, but is a tiki space ever really finished? There is some small bamboo trim that still needs to go around the top of the bar.

The sitting area looks great. The time will come when the cushions get recovered to contrast better. For now I think they match pretty well.

The wooden moose over the bathroom is Ralph. He's a long standing resident of the original The Rumpus Room before it had its make-over, and it was only fitting to make a space for him to call home again.

Cocoa Nut Monkeys caught in the net.

It wouldn't be a Kirby space without a little of that Kirby magic. The volcano looks really great in person. There are black-light active colors in it that really "pop" the artwork. It is actually more subtle when the lighting is at night.

There is more on tap for The Rumpus Room, mostly dealing with the outside grounds. A-frame structure, Lava rock fountain, bridge over a lagoon? Who knows, but if Kirby can pull-off an erupting volcano inside, anything is possible outside. You'll just have to wait like the rest of us. I had a blast helping Kirby, and it was great to collaborate different ideas with everyone involved. If you are lucky enough to live within visiting distance, you should really check it out. As Kirby keeps telling me, "The Rumpus Room is always open."

If you have the space and energy to create your own tiki bar, I highly suggest you grab some friends and get to it.

thanks for posting those pics mango, and thanks again for all the help ..I took a few night shots that im stiil weeding through so i will post those as soon as possible...and as mango said the rumpus room is always open so if any a wandering tiki travaler is in the lacrescenta ca area, shoot me a pm and stop on by for a mai tai..or a carve mahalo...kirby

Hey guys, cool space! It was nice checking on your progress so thanks for the pic's! That volcano, although simple in design, came out really cool and probably looks great with the lighting!
Nice job!!